Margin of Victory

[jacob_101]

Shira has recently pointed out that more states have trended Democratic from 2000-2004 than have trended Republican. 

That may be true, but Bush expanded his margin of victory in more states than not.

If you take the numbers from 2000 and add any third party candidate who received over 1% of the vote in any given state to Bush or Gore you find that Bush expanded his lead in most states.  For Nader I gave Gore 75% of the votes and Bush 25%.  For Buchanan I gave all to Bush(but only a couple states did he register over 1%).  No candidate under 1% was added to either candidate.

I have subtracted 3% from Bush due to he increased his National percentage by roughly 3%.

States over 2% margin of victory increase for Bush:

AL 8.4%
AZ 2.9%
AR 2.0%
CT 6.4%
DE 3.7%
FL 3.1%
HI 9.6%
IN 2.3%
KS 3.6%
KY 2.5%
LA 4.2%
MD 2.8%
MA 2.3%
NE 3.7%
NJ 8.1%
NY 6.5%
OK 6.3%
RI 8.3%
TN 7.9%
UT 3.6%
WV 4.3%
NATIONALLY 2.0%

States that were -2% or more loss for Bush are:

CO 2.2%
ID 3.5%
ME 3.1%
MT 4.6%
NV 2.6%
NH 3.7%
NC 3.1%
OH 2.8%
OR 3.9%
SD 4.2%
VT 9.9%
WA 2.5%
WY 2.4%

21 States Bush increased his margin of victory by more than 2%

13 States Bush margin of victory was decreased by more than 2%

This shows that when you account for Nader's 2.7% in 2000 Bush did better in more states than not.